Within history's repeating
by BlackEyedGirl
Summary: She will realise, eventually, that there is a certain freedom in knowing that this can't work. She has all the proof she could ever need of that. And that gives her courage. TobyAndy, post series.


**Title:** Within history's repeating  
**Pairing:** Toby/Andy  
**Rating:** R  
**Genre:** Drama  
**Length:** 2,500 words  
**Disclaimer:** All belongs to Sorkin and Wells.  
**Spoilers:** S1-7  
**Summary/AN: **She will realise, eventually, that there is a certain freedom in knowing that this can't work. She has all the proof she could ever need of that. And that gives her courage. For **scrollgirl **in **tww minis **at Livejournal

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The first time he proposed was the only time it came as a surprise. She was campaigning back home in Maryland, missing his warmth in her tiny apartment, and he was across the country losing a gubernatorial campaign. He called to ask whether she had opened her mail, and sounded relieved when she answered that she had not. When she found his familiar handwriting, lost between bills and advertisements, he tried to hang up. She understood why when she read the first lines, but was crying too hard to tell him to stop worrying. His voice was low and concerned, and she turned the tears to laughter to answer the question that somehow he restrained himself from asking again; did not simplify it; did not ruin the marvel that she had drawn this tender ardour out of someone like Toby. He laughed back, a bubbling _okay then _that was as sweet as the inked words.

- - - -

She knows that her marriage is over months before he does. She knew it (whispered it) before she stopped believing that the two of them could make a baby without need of help. Back when she still believed that his touch – worshipful, strong like his voice is not, running up her thigh – was so bound in wonder that it could not help but be spun into something else. A week before the election he looked up at her call and saw nothing but a distraction from the acceptance speech. He blinked and, when his eyes opened, the love that shone there, hidden in the light flashes in his dark eyes, broke her heart.

She knows it is over first, and does not tell him. He loved her first (she suspects, has never asked), and she does not want to be the one to end it. And she will have to, because she knows without need of asking that he will not. And this day, when she is a fractional loss of control from being truly cruel, not merely angry, it is only love of him that holds her back. She tells him, finally, because one day that love will not be enough. He only questions her about it once, angry and defensive, and blood-red nails make half-circles on her palms in the effort not to explain. (Or to swallow the first words up again.) There is a dull ache low in her belly where the baby is not, and she wonders whether it knew.

- - - -

"You should marry me again."

"Toby, tell me that you didn't say yes to this because you thought..."

"No. You made it perfectly clear that I was just a donor in this little arrangement. This is... I'm asking in spite of that, not because of it."

"In spite of the fact I made it perfectly clear that I was not asking for you to do this for me because I wanted a reconciliation?"

"Yes, and can I point out that those sort of sentiments are not exactly great motivation in that little room with the cup?"

"Still not telling me what it's called, then?"

"No."

"Toby, this doesn't mean..."

"I'm aware of what you said, Andrea."

"It doesn't mean nothing, Toby. It just doesn't mean what you want it to. You need to learn to deal with frustrated expectations."

"Because that'll be a real stretch for me!"

"And I had hoped that you might have learned to have a little grace with it."

"I don't want... I don't want to be one of those fathers."

She took his hands, carefully, in her own. She wonders whether he genuinely loves these children or if he just fears what it means that he doesn't. "Sweetie, you won't."

- - - -

It is not the first time he has proposed since the gynaecologist finally looked at her with a pleased smile. By her own count, including all attempts to slip it into casual conversation, it is the seventh.

She looks around at her perfect house, at the _hope_, shining suddenly on his face, and part of her hates him for making her do this again. Back when they were in a too small apartment, and she was elected and scared, and he was without a candidate and scared, this was their dream. She had always suspected he was teasing when he talked about it; like she was a little girl planning her dolls-house shiny life. She doesn't know how to tell him that she stopped believing in dolls-houses the day she left him. The children in the picture are real now, fragile lives blossoming under her fingertips where she touches her stomach. She does not want them to need protection from him. Toby would love them as he still loves her, but she looks around this big beautiful house, and cannot call to mind the picture she had of them here. She knows he was in it, laughing, but this house is silent now. She cannot bring her children here.

- - - -

She had wondered about CJ, briefly, once upon a time. Back when Toby's ease with his best friend seemed at odds with his discomfited quiet with her. She had thought that CJ's love for him might be more than enough to destroy their fragile something. Now, sitting in CJ's office begging for her children's father to be pardoned, she thinks that love may not be enough. He had betrayed CJ too, and she is no more forgiving of that the President. Andy's voice is barely hidden desperation, and she cannot think of any better words to say. His support in other quarters will not matter to CJ, whose concern is the quarters next door to her own. Her children will have to be enough to plead his case; she will not say that she loves him still. Her love for Toby had not been enough to bind the two of them together, let alone sway a friend's betrayal and a President's fury.

The first time she sees him, after, she thinks he will be angry at her interference. Instead he looks at the ground. When he looks up and meets her eyes he says nothing, but his fingers flutter uncertainly over his chest. She is not foolish enough to say that he is welcome, but perhaps her hand lingers on his elbow when she leads him into the house.

- - - -

His apartment is loud when she goes to pick up Huck and Molly. When she knocks, he answers the door and is there alone.

Sam Seaborn's voice calls from the phone. "Toby?" Speakerphone, and it makes sense now.

Toby looks at her oddly; some of her confusion must have shown on her face. He smiles at her briefly and turns away. "Sam, hold on a minute. Huck, Molly, your mom's early. Are you ready?"

A denial and its echo resound from the spare room.

"They just started putting away their things a minute ago," he explains. "I'll get them."

"You finish with Sam," she says, "I'll fetch them."

She walks down the short hallway and (after receiving the necessary hugs) stands in the doorway watching them pack.

"Well, tell Josh that he's wrong!" is called from the front room.

"I'm still in the room, Toby," Josh's voice answers, tinny down the line.

"And still wrong."

"Which one of us got a man elected recently, me or you?"

"Which one of us kept calling the other in _hysterics_ trying to get him elected?"

"And you were no help!"

"Josh," Sam admonishes lightly. Then he laughs, "You phoned _Toby _in a panic?"

"Not a panic. A very masculine and professional seeking of outside help."

"Seeking of professional help, would maybe have been a better strategy," Toby retorts. "Sam, there were days I could barely distinguish the high-pitched terror from the high-pitched celebrating."

"He does that," Sam answers, then, waiting a beat. "President Santos has started to complain about mice."

Josh protests loudly, and Sam's laughter sparks Toby into his own. The joke had been weak, and Josh's complaint instinctive, but Toby seems genuinely amused, if at nothing more than the fact that a double-set of promotions and all in between has not changed everything about the three of them.

Andy, a child's hand in each of her own, stands in the hallway silently, listening to him laugh.

- - - -

He delivered the children back on time, but she has been in meetings all day, and is already exhausted and lying waiting on the couch. He puts them to bed, lingering over the task as he always does, singing to them and telling them stories. She wakes to his hand brushing her hair back, and his abortive motion towards her. He leaves quickly then.

She knows what he stopped himself from doing, because the memory was buried but not lost. The weeks just after their marriage, falling asleep in the sitting room while he worked because she didn't want to go to their bed without him. Drifting off to the scratch of his pen and his soft breathing, and waking up to his hand brushing her hair from her face. And what he would have done after – a kiss to her forehead and coaxing her to her feet, steady arms under her own, steering her to the bedroom.

Sometimes he would undress her gently, tenderly, lay her on the bed and cover her up. The other days, when she was half-awake by the time they reached the bedroom, roused by his heat and his breath on her neck, she would undress him first. Undo his plain tie and unbutton his white shirt before he had reacted. He would smile at her then, always surprised, and reach slowly for her sweater, pulling it over her head and flushing at how her red hair fell against her arms. Cup her shoulders and run his hands down and around her breasts, stroking the curve of them with his thumb.

She undressed tonight, loosening her hair and trying to see what he saw. Looking at herself in the mirror, she could see no hint of the girl that inspired such worshipful touches. But then she had never seen these things in herself, only in how he watched her. She suspected that they may only be there for Toby. She lay in bed and stroked one hand down the dip between her breasts, closing her eyes and imagining writer's calluses on her smooth fingers.

- - - -

They had a faculty Christmas party at Columbia, and Andy was more surprised by the fact that Toby was considering going than by him pondering not having a date. It is the way that he tells her this in casual conversation, not hinting at anything, that makes her suggest going along.

One of the benefits of working in politics is having a profusion of ball dresses. He turns up at her door in a tux – he has more white-tie tuxes than dinner suits – blushing and shuffling his feet. She is transported, instantly, to a memory they never had – Toby as the awkward teenager and she as the shy virgin on the way to prom. The very strangeness of it makes her laugh, and he joins her.

They make small-talk in the car, and enter the party chatting casually. It is she who notices the mistletoe, not him, and so she can take advantage without feeling caught. She kisses his mouth as it runs into his beard, and his hand stutters at the small of her back.

He recovers, steers her in and introduces her to his colleagues. If she had believed everything he had told her about them she would suspect them all to be idiots, impractical, lacking in understanding of the real world. Academics rather than politicians, she corrects in her head, and is unsurprised when they turn out to be intelligent and mostly charming. What does surprise her is they way they smile when he approaches, greeting him cheerfully. He introduces her, unfailingly, as _"my ex-wife, Congresswoman Andrea Wyatt_". "_Andy_", she corrects. One of them asks if she is Huck and Molly's mother. She looks at Toby in question, but it is the blonde woman that answers, touching Toby's shoulder gently. "He talks about you all a lot."

Andy is the one who has to lead him onto the dance-floor near the end of the night. She considers taking off her heels but has always enjoyed the extra few inches she has over him. Toby wraps his arms around her waist and leads her into the centre of the room. She holds onto his shoulders and darts another kiss to his forehead before she thinks about it. This time he doesn't stop, and she can see the smile on his lips when she looks down at them.

- - - -

They could do this forever. A relationship half-lived in the moments between his evening arrivals with their children, and his quick departure when they were safely tucked away. Because to break it, to newly introduce an old variable, is to let history play itself out all over again. The love that did not hold them together as a young couple cannot hope to bring them back to each other now, with eight years of cold in between. Neither of them has changed enough to make her believe that this will end any differently. He may disagree, but she has finally curbed him of the habit of saying it. Toby has accepted that this is what they have, and she is absurdly disappointed in him.

"You're getting the train?"

"Yeah. Will's in town. I said I'd see him before I went back."

"You really should start charging these guys for consultancy."

"When Will takes Portland I'll send the DNC a bill."

"So you're not going back to New York until tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

"You're staying in a hotel tonight?"

"Yeah."

"Cancel it."

"What?"

"Cancel it, Toby. Stay here, put the kids to bed, we'll have some coffee and you can sleep on the couch. Let's both be here for the kids in the morning."

"And when the press want to know why your nearly-felonious ex-husband is sneaking out of the house in the morning?"

"So we don't sneak," she answered, shrugging. "You're the father of my children, Toby, it's not unreasonable that you stay over."

"I don't know if you've noticed, Andrea, but the press are not known for their reason."

"Chicken?" She grinned, poking him in the arm. "Usually you have more fight in you. Cancel the hotel."

"I thought you wanted me to fight?"

"In the long history of our fights, how many did you win?"

"Andy."

"Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. Stay here tonight."

"Yeah. I need to..." He waved his cell phone.

"Okay." She smiled at him, and he met it hesitantly.

Tonight, they will talk late, whispering close to each other so as not to wake the children. She will go to bed reluctantly, and wake to the welcome sound of the coffee-maker and Toby's low voice under Molly and Huck's. And one day, a long way from now, perhaps he will propose again, and she will not be surprised. It will be a ridiculous idea, destined only for a repeat of their first try. They will love each other, and break each other's hearts. She will know this and not care; say yes anyway.

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FIN. Reviews are always lovely 


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